> Why is not everything Java? In this case we would not need to use XML.
> If Sun was the only leading company everything would be easier ( with no
competitors ).
I think that's a fairly limited perspective of why XML is valuable. XML is
valuable, and has made such an impact on the industry, precisely because it
is language and implementation agnostic. That is, it would be no better to
say "Well everything's Java". The whole point is that XML is about the
information, and ONLY the information...nothing about how it's used or in
what language its related code is implemented.
What about 20, 30 years from now? XML-based data will still be usable. I
hope Java is still around then, but is it safe to ASSUME it will be? Surely
not. Even if it is, it will be in a much different form than it is today.
What are you going to do, run JDK 1.2 when the current version is Java 3.8,
just so you can deserialize some classes you saved "way back" in 2003?
Throughout the history of computing, information has been plagued by the
periodic loss of its accessibility as formats become either forgotten or too
obscure to be useful. XML is the first realistic attempt at making data
self-describing, and therefore, lasting.
-Brandon
Thought River South